Chapter 1 happiness and indigenous wisdom in the history of the americas

Introduction The attainment of happiness has always been a fundamental human aspiration since time immemorial. This is why all traditions of wisdom have made reference in one way or another to how it can be obtained, frequently conceiving happiness as the sumum, or pinnacle, of human achievement. Happiness as a goal has even been enshrined as a fundamental value for nations or governments.. The United States’ Declaration of Independence, for example, specifies “the pursuit of happiness” as one of the new nation’s fundamental aspirations, and the fathers of this manifesto, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, in their body of political ideas, made happiness a central good. Simon Bolivar, leader of the independence of several South American republics, did the same when he affirmed: “The most perfect system of government is that which produces the greatest possible amount of happiness...” (Bolivar, 1819). In those eighteenth century times, happiness was usually linked to feelings of safety and personal and social stability. In spite of all the foregoing, such an ideal as happiness might seem too general or utopian to some skeptic-pragmatists of today, and some might even say, sarcastically, that if in those days the Gross National Product --– the measurement that today’s economists have enshrined as the supreme value of any national well-being-had existed, the founding fathers would have preferred it. But the goal of happiness keeps returning to the agenda of leaders and nations, as a vital, unsatisfied aspiration; nations as diverse as Bhutan, whose government recently declared, on the basis of ancient Buddhist teachings, that “the National Happiness Product is more important than the Gross National Product”, and England, where the government has decided to highlight the pursuit of well-being and social happiness in its public policies. At the international level, the desire for happiness is central: at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit, held in 2000 in New York, Secretary General Kofi Annan presented a Gallup International poll, the biggest public opinion poll ever taken, covering about 60 nations, to the Heads of State. The poll concluded, “People